Read More

And the author told him his characters were based on Cornish “gentry” akin to his ancestors. Michael said: “I met Winston during a lunch.

“We were discussing his novels and he explained that he used people like Thomas and Anne Hawkins when creating his characters.”

Thomas was born in 1724, son of a leading barrister and public official. He went to Pembroke College, Cambridge and, at 23, became MP for the Grampound constituency.

He inherited the Trewithen estate from his uncle Phillip, also a barrister.

Thomas owned lucrative tin mines which employed hundreds of people and took great interest in their welfare. He fell in love with Anne Heywood — a brunette not a redhead like Demelza — whose father agreed they could marry so long as his architect got the job of doing up their mansion.

The couple went on to have four sons and one daughter. But tragedy struck when their eldest son John, 13, drowned in the Thames while at Eton.

A portrait of Ann Hawkins

Thom­­­­as and Anne brought his body home preserved in a barrel of brandy.

Their anguish must have matched that portrayed by Turner and co-star Eleanor Tomlinson in harrowing scenes as Ross and Demelza’s daughter died from “putrid throat” in series one.

Tragedy struck the Hawkins family a second time when another son died of “a fever in consequence of eating an ice-cream after dancing”.

And Thomas’ sense of responsibility for the people who worked for him resulted in his own premature death in 1766 at the age of 42.

Ross carrying his dead baby daughter in a coffin

At that time, smallpox was a killer but treatment was being developed.

Thomas volunteered to have an early form of vaccination as an example to his tenants. Tragically, he contracted the disease and died. His second son Christopher, inherited the estate when just eight years old.

He went on to become High Sheriff of Cornwall, an MP and in 1791 was made a baronet by William Pitt the Younger.

Poldark, played by Aidan Turner, tends to make viewers swoon (Image: BBC)

Fascinatingly, Sir Christopher became a recurring character in the Poldark novels, depicted as corrupt and cynical but generous to his friends.

All Graham’s books were inspired by stories he uncovered in 18th-century newspapers, letters, diaries and autobiographies. He said: “In all classes of historical novels, one has to have a degree of historical truth as well as a truth to human nature.”

And he added about his Poldark books: “I do not know how near the truth of life in the 18th century these novels are.